


to rest

by charcoalsuns



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 03:34:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9860576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charcoalsuns/pseuds/charcoalsuns
Summary: A chance meeting, a conversation, and what gets left in the dust.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after Miyagi's Spring High preliminaries.

 

 

On a Sunday morning in October, Ikejiri fishes his jacket out from his closet and takes a walk into town, hoping for one lunch special or another to catch his eye.

If one doesn't, though, he'll just head over to the place down from the post office, where he's been ordering the same bowl of ramen for what has probably been around five years now.

  

   

   

The stool next to him scrapes gently against the floor as someone sits next to him.

He spends some time looking up at the menu items written across the back wall, which is how Ikejiri figures he hasn't been here often enough to know his usual, or that he's the kind of person who likes to try something different each time. Or, that he always reads through all the choices, thinking he's definitely going to get something new this time, but ends up asking for that same dish again, anyway.

Not that Ikejiri particularly knows anything about that sort of thought process.

He focuses back on the ends of his chopsticks, piles his spoon high, and continues eating. It's a good bowl. It always is.

Mounted in one corner of the comfortably lit room is a small, flat television, currently – eternally – broadcasting the local news channel. Ikejiri slurps up his noodles as it switches from the weather map to a recap of high school extracurriculars. He doesn't watch the news often, only glimpses it in restaurants, if he's honest; the area covered always seems larger than he's aware. Schools whose students have accomplished things worthy of brief on-air mention, schools whose names he recognizes as if from fine print captions on some website he once scrolled through. Tokonami would never appear among them.

Last in the segment is a school whose name is printed across his memory like an image all its own. The muted coverage of yesterday's match feels less real, somehow, surrounded here by scrolling text and politely impressed reporters. Maybe it's just the nerves that have left him.

"Wow," comes a voice to his side. "Shiratorizawa… lost? To Karasuno?"

Ikejiri gets a better look at him this time, turning his head at a speed he hopes isn't too abrupt or noticeable.

No such luck, though, and the guy catches him at it. He smiles, bright in the filtered daylight, a crest of hair like a dyed cockatiel waving from the top of his head.

"I used to play volleyball," he says to Ikejiri. "My last match was against Shiratorizawa, back in the Inter-high preliminaries."

A blink, as Ikejiri runs through the coincidence again. He lets out a breath, wry, but still amused. "My last match was then, too. Lost in the first round – to Karasuno."

A laugh, oddly delighted. "How about that?" The guy shifts back on his stool, turning to face Ikejiri directly. "I'm Akimiya Noboru, from Ougiminami."

"Ikejiri Hayato, Tokonami." He pauses for a beat, not sure if he should say, "I'm sorry, I don't…"

Akimiya doesn't even blink. "It's okay," he says, without a trace of bitterness or shame, "We wouldn't have stood out much." His grin goes a bit sheepish, then. "Actually, to be totally honest, I hadn't heard of your school, either."

He lifts one shoulder in what seems an unconscious shrug, and the way he doesn't look to be expressing _disinterest_ through it makes Ikejiri want to laugh along with him. He settles for, "Well, then, I guess we're even," and a glance drawn back to the television, where the entirety of Karasuno is celebrating once again, the center lights of the gymnasium glinting off their tears.

Neither of them say anything more, not when the news switches to an updated weather report, nor while they finish off their respective lunches.

But something keeps Ikejiri in his seat after he returns his empty bowl and pays the minimal bill. Something leads him to wait, to answer Akimiya's questioning look with a hesitant smile.

Maybe it's the nerves that have left him. Or, maybe, it's acceptance that has settled in for good, and now turns his curiosity toward this person who might be more familiar to him than any stranger generally would.

   

  

   

"Ougiminami's a few towns over, really," Akimiya says, once they've both given their thanks and made their way outside. "I've just come on an errand – something ended up at the wrong post office, and it's less hassle if I pick it up myself."

"Oh, do you—"

He shakes his head. "Nah, I'm fine. I just have to go in time to catch one of the buses back."

"Right." Now that they're in the open, and walking in the same direction of _nowhere in particular_ , Ikejiri flounders a bit, wondering what he was thinking when he stayed behind; what he thought he wanted to say, to ask. He takes a breath, looks up at the crisp, cloudless sky. "It seems like a whole different world, on TV."

Akimiya hums, like he's considering. "I went to watch my underclassmen play a few months ago," he tells Ikejiri. "They lost to Karasuno, funny enough. Anyway, I was the only one from my year, and the team probably wasn't that different without me, but still… It felt like being left behind. I just couldn't tell you who, exactly, _was_ being left behind."

At his words, it's August again in Ikejiri's mind, and he's standing by the door of the gymnasium, unnoticed. "I can understand that, I think," he says. He doesn't actually know if the team had made it to the best sixteen, after all. He hadn't looked for a chance to find out.

"It did seem like a whole different world," Akimiya continues, glancing around at the street signs as they pause on a corner. "It wasn't that I'd never watched a game from the stands before, but I'd never been there while knowing I wouldn't get to play again."

Ikejiri tilts his head toward a small arc of flowerbeds, full of dry earth, empty of flowers. Akimiya takes to the suggestion with a silent, grateful grin, and perches easily on one half of the weathered bench there.

It's a bit of a wonder, Ikejiri thinks as he sits next to him – this is the first time he's ever known this bench to be used.

He stretches his legs out in front of him, missing the sidewalk by millimeters. "Part of me still feels like I could get right back out onto a court and start up again," he admits, aware of how silly he sounds. "Even though I know there must be something different about those guys. A bit of luck, sure, but that's not all; they would've run out eventually, if it was. I can't imagine how hard they go at practice."

Akimiya has his arms overlapping before him, from thought, or the wind, or both. His laughter floats on his breath in visible wisps, as free as Ikejiri feels, most of the time. "Some luck we had, running into them early on." He shifts his sneakers against the ground, idle.

"Yeah," says Ikejiri, his own snort turning into a sigh. "I know I pretty much accepted my fate, once it became clear who we were playing against, but all the same, you know? I wished I could have played longer."

"And by the time it hit you, it was too late?"

He glances over; he'd been mistaken earlier. There is no trace of bitterness or shame in Akimiya's voice, in his friendly smile – but that's not all. He wouldn't have wanted to talk, if it was.

Ikejiri nods. He'd been mistaken back then, too. "I thought I'd be relieved, like I always was, when the season would end and I didn't have to practice anymore. But at the same time, I also wanted to win. It'd be impossible; mutually exclusive, right? But I didn't want to stop. The match was tiring, and probably hopeless, and I stopped thinking about that for the first time. And when they scored their last point… I don't think I'd ever felt so conflicted."

Across the street, the light changes. Ikejiri's throat burns slightly in the cold. There's a soft vulnerability to the way Akimiya says, "I think part of me is going to keep feeling regrets, even if it's well behind me."

"That it was over too soon?"

He pauses, shaking his head a little. "It would have ended before long. I knew that, and I get it now, still. But I can't help feeling like I could've done something more, while I was there. Run harder, longer, a step further. Been a better captain, a fiercer one, even." Looking at him now, bright and easygoing and honest, Ikejiri can't entirely see it, but he thinks he understands. He's believed he could be someone different, too, if that was what it took.

"What if you leave them here?" he asks, gesturing to their worn corner, away from the road.

Akimiya looks around, lands on the unoccupied flowerbeds. "What, like, write them down and bury them?"

A breath of amusement leaves Ikejiri's mouth before he can stop it. "Ah, sorry. I mean, you could, if you want? Though I'm not sure who might end up finding and reading them. I meant, since you're just passing through here, you could try to leave your regrets behind."

"That," Akimiya says, smiling like he wouldn't mind at all, "sounds like something out of a story."

Ikejiri grins at him. "Well, we have them, too, don't we? Even if they aren't ones that anybody would look to read."

And from the way Akimiya leans his head back, eyes closed, laughter sailing away from both of them – Ikejiri thinks that he, too, has found himself browsing other books in the meantime.

It's taken a fair bit of inward reconsideration, for Ikejiri to get to the point of recognizing his own limits. He tries not to pull himself short; he doesn't want to underestimate what he can do, even though he doesn't know where it is that he'll do anything, just yet.

When he finds himself watching, now, it is with a kind of clarity he'd missed before. There are more stories out there than can be counted or observed, and most of them will be perfectly unremarkable. But in the way of plants by the roadside, and random encounters in routine places – they fill up the background like no one else could.

    

  

   

In the end, nothing is written down.

Nothing more, that is; the flowerbeds remain undisturbed, and Ikejiri knows he probably isn't going to sit on this bench again, no matter how many times he'll walk past it on his way back.

Before Akimiya turns to go, he gives Ikejiri a last grin, shoulders shrugging at a joke they'll be able to laugh at in full, one day.

"Hey," he says. "At least we got to play."

Ikejiri lets himself remember, lets himself know, _It was enough_. He raises his hand in a brief wave. "True, that," he says, and, "Good luck."

Akimiya returns his wave cheerfully, feet angling back toward the street. "Thanks. You, too."

When they part ways, he doesn't look back, and Ikejiri doesn't stay to watch him leave.

His ramen from earlier settles a little further, warm and content.

Beneath his own steps, the rest of the afternoon stretches out before him, ending beyond where he can see.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Wishing a happy birthday to Ikejiri :''>
> 
> I am very much in a state of /o\ about characterization, especially here as I wanted to explore a little, but didn't want to undermine any of their development or resolve within their respective narratives. 
> 
> I hope it reads all right, and thank you for giving this a try!


End file.
